


My heart will carry me back and away

by astrokath



Category: KAY Guy Gavriel - Works, Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8925538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrokath/pseuds/astrokath
Summary: Springtime morning in AvalleAnd I don't care what the priests say:I'm going down to the river todayOn a springtime morning in Avalle Four of the women of the Palm, and the hopes and dreams that they fought for.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eisoj5](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisoj5/gifts).



 

**Dianora**

 

If she closes her eyes, she can just imagine that the deep waters of Chiara are those of Tigana Bay. It is not something she ever did on her journey north, nor even during the early years of her time here in the saishan. But now, that time is coming to an end. Perhaps that is why her mind has returned to other farewells, to other beginnings... that were only a different type of ending in themselves.

She remembers her mother and father, hand in hand on the white shore. She remembers Baerd racing ahead before she’s ready, trying to outpace her longer, coltish limbs the only way he can. She remembers that Ember Day when the storms rolled in, dashing themselves against the sea wall, and all the scattered treasures that the falling tide left behind. She remembers the Princess of Tigana, holding court at the waterline, the summer before it all came to an end.

Pasithea had never had daughters, only sons. Had there been any grief in that absence? In the days when one _could_ grieve for the loss of might-have-beens, instead of everything that ever mattered at all?

She doesn’t know. What she does know, is that the Princess took her with her that morning, her mother beside her, while Saevar and the Prince inspected the damage to the oldest parts of the harbour. She remembers the story Pasithea told, a story meant for a daughter, and the shells they gathered along the way.

Dianora wonders what became of her. What they might say to one another, were they ever to meet. Whether pride would win, that she is doing what she came to do at last, or if the betrayal of her nights has sullied her heart too far.

She remembers how easily they were crushed underfoot, the day the Ygrathan soldiers came. All the stories, all the shells, nothing left behind but gleaming grains of hurt.

_And they slipped through the waves and away, gleaming fish of silver and green, faster than the eye could follow. But the girl wasn’t to be fooled, oh no! She wrapped her limbs in her skirt of seafoam, and called on Eanna to light her path beneath the moonlight._

There is power in stories, just as there is power in names.

 

* * *

 

 

**Pasithea**

 

She is standing in Orsaria’s tower, in Avalle, but it is not the place she remembers. Oh, she has heard stories aplenty of what became of the place after the fall. How the towers were brought low, and what was done amongst the ruins. But although this _is_ Avalle, and this the Prince’s tower, it is not what it once was.

The details are all wrong.

The painted walls still show Tigana Bay, and Adaon and Micaela, but the hand that created them has changed. Quileian carpets line the floors, but instead of the familiar blades-and-roses motif, she sees a stylised pattern of interlocking doves, or some other such bird. There is no marble beneath them, only honey-gold stone. The skyline is too low, and on the hillside outside, there is a new scar against the evergreens. In the city itself, the rising scaffolds and stones of speak of different masters under the stars.

But Pasithea is not a woman to be fooled.

“A promise, Eanna?” she breathes. “Or merely a symptom of my age?”

“Who are you?”

A new voice. Sharp, and guarded. A note of command. Pasithea knows what that means, in this room, in this place, in this time that is not her own. “Someone much like yourself,” she declares, before turning to inspect the princess who has come. Beautiful, though in a different manner to Pasithea herself in her youth, and she carries herself with a lioness’ poise. Her hair is a sun-brightened cascade of amber around her face, her dress a pale lavender green. She will be delivered of her child before Vidomni wanes. A daughter, who will be a child of Avalle and Tigana by the Sea.

More: there is recognition in her eyes.

“I believe you,” the woman says. “You… you look like-”

“Don’t!” Pasithea snarls. It’s one thing for her to know her predecessor, but quite another for Pasithea to believe it for herself. “Don’t tell me you’re Alessan’s bride. Don’t tell me of the happenstance that brought you here, or of all the chances he squandered. Don’t tell me how you came to raise these walls from naught, unearned. How none of this will _ever_ happen at all!”

For a moment, it looks as though the other woman will respond in kind, but her fire is tempered within her ocean-deep eyes. “I think this is a dream for both of us. I wish...” She sighs. “I wish you had lived to see this.”

“Well, I certainly don’t.” What Pasithea wishes is that she’d had the strength to do what was necessary herself. The strength to doubt and disown her own offspring before it was all too late. To descend in furious rage upon the tyrant, to tear his throat out with her teeth and nails if need be.

Instead, night after night, she watches all her hopes and towers fall.

The younger princess gives a throaty chuckle. “Would you wish all that? Truly”

Pasithea meets her gaze, sees the history left unspoken, as forgotten as her name. “What do you know of falling?”

 

* * *

 

 

**Catriana**

 

The dirt roads of the distrada were cracking in the summer’s heat, while grapes grew fat and sweet on the vines. They were only a few miles out from Ardin town. After that would come the coast road, and then the village, and the sea. Somewhere out there, blue against blue, would be her father’s boat. He’d sold it, apparently, to a cousin of a friend.

“You look thoughtful,” her companion says.

Truth was, thinking was the last thing on her mind. “It must be strange for you, Alais, coming home after such a long time away.”

Alais smiles. She smiles so often now, and her solemn face is brightened by it. “No stranger than it is for you, I suppose. So much has changed since I was a child.” Her grin broadens, as she points out the children darting between the rows of vines. “I loved that game, once. Selvena did, too, believe it or not.”

Catriana hadn’t ever had much time for games as a young girl. There was always too much to be done, and too little joy to be found. There’d been no close friends, or at least, no friends she’d ever trusted enough to let them close. Her parents had taught her that, she supposed. How to hide. How to run.

How to stand and fight.

She shakes her head, adjusts her fingers on the reins.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” she says. “All they wanted was to keep me safe. They did it for me. When I was nothing but a baby, never meant to amount to anything at all. I didn’t ask for it. And when I knew… how could I ever live up to that? All the things I wasn’t, all the things they were never brave enough to be, everything that was lost and left behind? For me?”

“I’d say you already have.”

“So does that make them right? What they did?”

Alais doesn’t answer right away. “They loved you, Catriana.”

She knows that, of course. All parents love their children, or so the songs say, even if they never come to understand them. There are songs that say the same thing of children, too.

They round a stand of cypress trees, and finally come in sight of the sea.

She hadn’t expected it, but it feels like coming home.

 

* * *

 

 

**Alais**

 

It is the third day after the battle, but Alais can still hear the screams. She doesn’t understand why that memory is harder to bear than the death of the man she slew. She made a choice, with him - his life, or Devin’s - and she’d make the same choice again.

But there has been so much death in this place, and none of them sleep easily at night.

When evening comes, she takes a curving track towards the sea. Gulls call out as they arc across the sky, but the valley behind her is haunted by darker birds now. A pair of goats startle as she passes by, and insects buzz between scattered clumps of dung and bright flowers. The close-cropped grass gives way to tussocks of marram, and soon she finds her sandalled feet slipping deeply into the soft, white sand.

There is a man at the water’s edge.

He is weeping.

Alais should be cautious here. Should be afraid.

Instead, she settles down onto the sand, far enough away for her own safety and his, and waits.

“I saw a woman by the water’s edge,” he says at last. His voice marks him as one of the Ygrathans, but his face is kind, and lined more by laughter than by age. “I thought it was her. But it wasn’t, of course. And then she vanished into the waves.”

There is a story Catriana shared with her yesterday, a story from Tigana. Of a girl who fell in love with a boy from the sea. How he gifted her a skirt of sea foam, and how they adventured together above the sea and beneath. It didn’t help her sleep, but for a while at least, she felt at peace with herself again.

There are stories they tell all across the Palm, even in Astibar. She could share one of those stories with this stranger, if she chose… but his life will fork regardless, whether she tells him more of the riselka or not.

His name is Scelto, she learns. And, as strange and unexpected as it is, he’s heard Catriana’s story once before.


End file.
